Are You Here

Year 12, Day 158 - 6/6/20 - Movie #3,564

BEFORE: Jenna Fischer carries over from "The 15:17 to Paris" - I didn't really have a ton of options there, I ran out of Tony Hale movies, the Judy Greer films are usually romantic comedies, and I've got nothing with Thomas Lennon in it on my watchlist right now.  BUT, this link gets me to another Owen Wilson film, and I've got plenty of those - he factors prominently into my Father's Day chain, which this one (sort of, tangentially) is a part of, based on the synopsis.

THE PLOT: Two childhood best friends, one a superficial womanizer and the other a barely functioning bipolar, embark on a road trip back to their hometown after one of them learns that his estranged father has died.

AFTER: I've already watched a few films this year that have taken a look behind the scenes of television production, like "I Love You, Daddy", "The Ugly Truth", "Late Night" and "Bombshell", then there was "Morning Glory", which showed us just how wacky a weatherman could get on the air.  I'm back on that track today, with Owen Wilson playing Steve Dallas, a charming but lazy weatherman on an Annapolis station whose only ambitions are to get high and get laid, with a never-ending set of rehearsed lines that he uses to get women to sleep with him.  As they say, the secret to success is sincerity, and once you learn to fake that, you've got it made.

He's also always short on money, trying to get an advance on his salary or borrow a few bucks here and there, come on, you know he's good for it, right?  But the truth is that he's funding his best friend from childhood, Ben, who's trying to write a book, and all of Steve's money keeps going toward Ben's rent (to keep him out of Steve's bachelor pad, one assumes) and fueling their drug trips and take-out pizza orders.  Hey, who needs ambition when all of your basic needs are being taken care of?

Their routine is shaken up by the news of the death of Ben's father, so they take a road-trip to rural Pennsylvania (?) for the funeral, and that's where we start to get the idea that Ben's not completely sane.  He wants to buy all the crawfish being sold as bait at a roadside stand, I guess with the intention of setting them all free, just because he thinks the crayfish have a nervous system almost as advanced as humans, or dolphins.  Which sounds like the sort of thing a militant vegetarian would say, but unfortunately Ben never gets around to setting the crawfish free, they all just die in the trunk of the car.  Ben happens to be a well-intended vegetarian, but he seems to also have a problem with following through on things.

(I'm not a vegetarian, but I was once married to one.  I get some of the underlying principles, but I was raised a certain way, eating meat and I'm not likely to change.  I keep some veggie burgers on hand and I try to eat them once a week or so, but I'm not sure that makes an appreciable difference.  While I don't feel actively guilty about eating meat, I realize that I'm also complicit in the deaths of a few dozen cows and maybe several hundred chickens.  I didn't kill them directly, but my eating habits caused these creatures to be born just to die - I feel bad, but not bad enough to lose sleep over it or change my ways.  I could go meatless if I wanted to, or if the pandemic affects the meat supply any more than it already has - I would just prefer not to.)

After the funeral, Ben has a tough time recovering from the loss, so he moves back into his childhood home for a bit, and Steve commutes back from his weatherman gig on the weekends.  But when Ben learns that he's inherited the bulk of his father's estate - the house, the farmland, the country store - it not only puts him at odds with his sister, but it gives him the resources to do whatever he wants.  He could sell the land and live off that money, or he could keep it and run the farm and store, or give the farm to his friend Steve, who he trusts more than he trusts himself, and would have better ideas for what to do with it.  I'm surprised that neither of them at this point thought to turn the place into a marijuana farm, because that sure would have saved them both some money.  Perhaps that sort of thing's not welcome in Pennsylvania.

But an opportunity like this also creates an existential crisis for Ben, and he's just not equipped to handle it.  For a short time he has a vision of clarity, and decides to not only live on the land, but also turn it into some kind of New Age commune or farming education center where other people can learn to get more in touch with nature.  This was not a terrible idea, because so few people know what it takes to live on a farm, and with movements these days toward more sustainable farming and other scientific and earth-friendly ideas, Ben might have been on to something here.  But remember, Ben has a terrible record of not following through with things, and with Steve only visiting on the weekends to support his plans, before long he's battling depression, acting out and questioning his own plans.

Steve's just as unsure of himself, because given the idea of owning a farm and having some place to get away from the city, suddenly he's not as interested in the fast-paced world of reporting the weather during the day and hiring escort services at night.  And after meeting Ben's step-mother, who was much younger than her husband, he starts to think that maybe he can convince her to stay on with him when he takes over the farm.  Meanwhile, Ben's sister is contending the will, or rather Ben's competency, and threatening to ruin everyone's plans to improve their situations.

I wish this film had a little more focus, because it did tend to (much like Ben) move from one idea to another very quickly, kind of unsure if it wanted to make a point about city life vs. country life, or the fragile nature of relationships or friendships, or what it means to deal with the death of one's father.  So it ends up being about all of those things, but I think the most poignant issues here concerned questioning one's own career, or maybe I'm just projecting.  Right now a lot of people are out of work, looking for work, or preparing to go back to work - meanwhile they've just spent the last 8 or 10 weeks at home with their families, and that means that on some level for many people, there's been a shift of priorities.  Some people may have started to work from home and they may not want to go back to working in an office and commuting every day.  Others may be teaching their own kids at home, and either hating that, or wondering if they might want to continue doing that.  And while some people can't wait for restaurants and movie theaters to re-open, there may be other people who got used to staying home every day, and even when things open up again, may find it difficult to go back to eating and watching movies in public.

It's too bad that National Mental Health month is over, this would have fit right in on that theme.  I'm more on the Father's Day track anyway right now, and that would seem to include a film where a character has to deal with his father's passing.  But hey, June is also National Outdoors Month, so if you've been cooped up inside because of the pandemic, it's time to get out there!  Wearing a mask, of course.  June is also National Oceans month, PTSD Awareness month, Caribbean American Heritage Month, LGBTQ Pride Month of course, and African-American Music Apprecation Month.  I can work with some of those, I already watched "Love, Simon" for Pride month and "Straight Outta Compton" could tie in with African-American Music Appreciation.  Though is rap really music?  JK.

Also starring Owen Wilson (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions"), Zach Galifianakis (last heard in "Missing Link"), Amy Poehler (last seen in "Wine Country"), Laura Ramsey (last seen in "Shrink"), Alana de la Garza, Lauren Lapkus (last seen in "Opening Night"), Paul Schulze, Greg Cromer (last seen in "Bad Words"), Joel Gretsch (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Edward Herrmann (last seen in "Overboard" (1987)), David Selby, Peter Bogdanovich (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Melissa Rauch (last heard in "Ice Age: Collision Course"), Michael Uppendahl, Tom Key.

RATING: 5 out of 10 BBQ ribs at Outback Steakhouse

The 15:17 to Paris

Year 12, Day 157 - 6/5/20 - Movie #3,563

BEFORE: Tony Hale carries over from "Love, Simon", where he played a school principal.  Here he plays a school gym teacher, and I've also been watching him during this whole pandemic in "Arrested Development", at least one episode per night, if I can.  Sometimes two, sometimes I don't have time for any, but at least I'm working my way through this series on Netflix, and I just finished season 3, so  two more seasons to go.

I just recently noticed the similarities to the Trump family - with a father, George Bluth, who's been involved with real-estate scams, then constantly wanted by the law for one thing or another, plus the family structure of him having three sons (Don Jr., Eric and Barron) and one adult daughter (Ivanka). OK, so maybe Trump has an extra daughter and a few more wives than George Bluth, but still, a lot of stuff sort of lines up once you start looking for overlap.  So Tony Hale as Buster Bluth (the dumb one - OK, that's not specific enough - the really nervous, mama's boy dumb one) is probably the analog for Eric Trump.

Of course, after realizing this I jumped online only to discover that I certainly wasn't the first to notice the connections between the two families, and this has already been discussed at length in some forums.  Just like I said yesterday, this is sort of how I lead my life, always just a bit late for every party.

THE PLOT: Americans discover a terrorist plot on a Paris-bound train.

AFTER: Never, ever, in my wildest, darkest imagination, could I have envisioned the state of our world today.  Sure, after the 2016 election I figured the you-know-what would hit the fan in some fashion, but nobody had predicted a pandemic, racial protests, rampant unemployment, political corruption, rioting, looting, (and don't forget the murder hornets, I sure haven't) all hitting at the same time.  The end result of all this is that we can now look back at films made during the before-times with some newfound degree of fondness - and yes, this all puts me in the position where a film about an international terrorism incident can now be labelled as "the good old days".  Hey, remember terrorism?  Guys with C-4 in their shoes, their underwear, the inconveniences of TSA screenings, people on TV waiving ISIS flags and shouting "Death to America"?  We need a new word for terrible things that we don't miss, yet still seem better than our current situation - how about NOT-stalgia?

At one point during the development of this film, there were actors attached, and most likely then real footage of the three American heroes would have been used during the closing credits, which is a common practice in biopics these days.  But the choice was then made, right or wrong, to have the real people, who are not professional actors, play themselves.  It's a bold move, but also a risky one - I can get that director Clint Eastwood was striving for authenticity, and of course who would know better about what happened and what was said between these three men before, during and after the incident than these three men themselves?  The problem then becomes, however, that we're all conditioned to accept professional actors playing roles, pretending to be the real people on screen, and by "professional actors" I mean people who have studied, who have experience in expressing certain emotions in front of a camera.  Most "real" people don't have this ability, and tend to come off as either stiff or nonchalant when the camera starts rolling.  You can even see it in some interviews, people who are not relaxed, not comfortable being themselves just because they know they're being recorded.  News anchors just starting out probably experience some form of this ("the on-screen jitters"), and it could take them months or years to be relaxed enough to deliver the news authentically.

Yep, that's the problem here, big time, with the three leads in the story playing themselves.  I even know that they are who they're pretending to be (or pretending to be who they are, whichever) and I had a hard time believing what they said.  Yes, I'm prepared to suggest that in this case, actors could have done a better job playing these three men than they themselves could - at least as far as the perception of the viewing audience goes, again because we've been conditioned to expect a certain range of emotions in an acting performance, and actors have been trained on how to use these emotions to create a false reality, they can fake authenticity - the good ones, anyway.  This is also why so many child actors come off as unbelievable - they're very good at being honest and being themselves, but it's more difficult for them to believably pretend to be someone else.

But this one reached me emotionally, especially at the end.  Time-jumping aside - there was a super-strong story here, but it only kicks in during the last third of the film.  The first whole hour is build-up, and what strikes me is that this would have happened even if the director had chosen to present the events in a linear fashion, one timeline instead of two, with limited flashbacks instead of an excessive amount.  The first hour (the men as kids in school, the tribulations of military service, then the fateful European vacation) would have dragged no matter what, because we all came to see what happened on that train.  So the main reason to run a split-narrative would have been to cover up or eliminate this long, boring build-up to the train incident, but yet that's where we ended up anyway, even with the bouncing around between their childhood and adulthood experiences.

Ideally, when a film is edited like this, in the split-timeline fashion, the goal is to show how the events of the past directly influenced the ones in the present or future, by juxtaposing them we're supposed to notice certain similarities, or how something somebody said in the past had a different or more important meaning in consideation of those future events.  But here there's almost no correlation between the two timelines, because these boys had a childhood that was so similar to everyone else's. For example, so much time is spent on showing the mothers of two of the boys meeting with a teacher and a principal at their school over their sons' difficulties in class - what purpose, exactly, do these scenes serve?  None, really, not in either timeline - there's no direct point to be made, and nothing that later gives us insight to their heroic behavior on the train.

It's like we're watching two different movies, and the one set in their teen years could be about almost anybody, including the kids seen in "Good Boys".  And the few correlations that are there are ones I don't want to acknowledge, like the scenes with the boys studying World War II battle plans and playing war games with toy guns, because knowing that director Clint Eastwood supports the NRA, I think I see the conclusion that he WANTS me to draw, that kids who play with guns grow up to take down terrorists and save lives, and I reject that overly-simplistic suggestion.

A co-worker recently pointed out to me (after I gave "Knives Out" a "6") that the vast majority of my ratings are in the 4 to 6 range, and she's right.  I believe that most films are 4's, 5's or 6's - simply because so many aren't bad enough to be 2's or 3's, and not great enough to be 8's or 9's.  And so far this year, my highest score to any film has been a "7".  You could say it's an off-year, especially with no movies being released on the big-screen, but honestly, nothing's impressed me that much in my 2020 viewing year - not even "Joker", though perhaps I'm due for a re-watch there, now that I know nothing's really likely to surpass it, not even a superhero movie, not until "Wonder Woman 1984" or "Black Widow" get released, anyway.

So what am I supposed to do with this one, then, in the end?  It's a powerful TRUE story about three young men who stopped a terrorist and saved a lot of lives, preventing a massacre on this French train.  They should be commended, and their story should be told and the men should be celebrated as heroes.  But their story is buried here under the mess of a non-linear split timeline presentation, and I still maintain that their story could have been stronger if depicted through the use of professional actors.  And that's how I arrived at the score below, which is based on my enjoyment of the film, and not the importance of the story.  I was emotionally affected by their heroism, because in many ways this was the movie that I needed to see right now, but the score stands. If anything, I think I might be going easy on this one.

For the details on this real event from 2015, just search on "2015 Thalys train attack".

Also starring Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, Mark Moogalian, Isabelle Risacher Moogalian, Judy Greer (last seen in "Love Happens"), Jenna Fischer, Ray Corasani, Chris Norman, P.J. Byrne (last seen in "Bombshell"), Sinqua Walls, Thomas Lennon (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Jaleel White, Irene White, Gary Weeks (last seen in "Rampage"), Steve Coulter (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Robert Pralgo (last seen in "The Blind Side"), Paul-Mikel Williams, Bryce Gheisar, Cole Eichenberger, William Jennings.

RATING: 6 out of 10

Love, Simon

Year 12, Day 156 - 6/4/20 - Movie #3,562

BEFORE: I'm back on my original chain, and lined up for Father's Day in a few weeks.  My little 2-film detour yesterday means that I'll have to double-up again in early July so I can land on the right film for July 4, but that's been par for the course all year long, which is why I'm 6 films ahead of the day count, here in the 6th month of the year.

Alexandra Shipp carries over from "Straight Outta Compton", replacing the original intended link from "Knives Out".  Sometimes I feel like I'm on the right track just because all roads seem to be heading in the same direction, more or less.  Of course, I'm the person who designed the roads, so they go where I want them to go, but still, the feeling can be comforting.

THE PLOT: Simon Spier keeps a huge secret from his family, friends and all of his classmates: he's gay.  When that secret is threatened, Simon must face everyone and come to terms with his identity.

AFTER: Look, I'm very far removed from high school at this point, so I should probably stop commenting on them as if I know the way that high school works now.  I don't, there are all new rules where social interactions are concerned, the whole sexual preference and gender identity thing is a big part of that, but also I went to high school when computers were in a state of relative infancy, we didn't have smart phones or even cell phones, and only a few geeky kids knew what e-mail was.  If you wanted to get a message to somebody in those days, you had to call their house, mail them something, or go and find them in person, wherever they might be.  It sounds like the Dark Ages when I put it like that.

What's been the effect of all the new technology on personal relationships?  I guess it's both good and bad, because as we see in this movie, somebody who's feeling unsure of themselves or alone in the world can go online and connect with other people, or post something about how alone they feel, and maybe they can then find another person who's also feeling that way.  But there's a downside, because this high-school has some kind of inner secrets blog that everyone is reading to figure who the gay kid at school is.  Not the openly gay kid, because there's no mystery there.  It's the closeted gay kid that everyone's talking about, which leads to obvious questions about why the closeted gay kid is posting about being a closeted gay kid, when it seems that he could remain more hidden and anonymous if he just didn't blog about it at all.

Simon's in something of the same boat - he's aware of his sexual preference thanks to some erotic dreams he had about Daniel Radcliffe when he was 13.  But he's never acted on his feelings, just made some clumsy attempts to talk to the hunky landscaping guy with the leaf blower who works across the street.  This alone feels like a Hollywood cop-out, a way to have a trendy gay character without depicting any potentially controversial gay activity.  So it's delay, delay, delay on the major story points, because Simon therefore spends most of the movie trying to figure out who "Blue" is in the real world, only he's wrong several times before he's right.  There's a good message in there somewhere, namely that anybody could be the gay blogger, he's one of us and we are all together, but it's buried under this sense of urgency in figuring it out, which seems contrary to the message that people should feel free to come out on their own schedule.

There's also the depiction of Simon coming out to his own parents, which means this film has triple meaning for right now - it's Pride Month meets graduation meets Father's Day - but the relationship between Simon and his dad is awkward at best, and I'm not sure even this topic is handled well here.  Simon mentions at one point that his father was a former high-school football star, and then later he says that he's "not very macho" - well, which is it, because those two things seem rather contradictory.  Simon's dad naturally assumes that his son is using his computer to look at photos of women in lingerie (lucky kids these days, all I had as a tween was the Sears catalog, no internet) so of course he's disappointed to some degree when his son comes out.  This is a really fine line that some actors have to walk these days, because treating someone's sexual preference as bad news sort of sends the wrong message, yet if they immediately displayed acceptance or celebration of this fact, that would probably seem insincere.

Blackmailing someone with the information that they're gay is also wrong, wrong, wrong, yet that's what another character does here.  It seems Simon used the school library computer to check his e-mail, and forgot to completely log out after, so this very clueless character (who's in the drama club, yet somehow not gay himself) approaches Simon and tries to trade this information to get close to Simon's friend Abby.  Martin seems pretty shrewd for a clueless character, so again, which is it?  How can he be pitched as someone with no filter, who's unable to read the room and realize when he's coming off like a jerk, yet he's also manipulative enough to try to trick a girl into falling for him, and then also clueless enough to believe that this plan could work?  Right, because women love it when they find out that their boyfriend wasn't confident enough to ask them out directly,  but instead blackmailed somebody into setting them up.  The battle between the sexes is not a game of Risk, where you convince another player to try to invade a country just to reduce the number of armies in it, so that you can invade on your next turn and have an easier time of it.

Simon goes along with the plan, but that means keeping Abby from dating Nick, and also setting up his other female friend, Leah, with Nick - when it's pretty obvious to everyone but Simon that Leah's in love with Simon himself, to whatever degree that's possible.  Leah later asks Simon why he came out to Abby and not her, and it's a very valid question - Simon and the screenwriter have no clear answer for this.  Screenwriters also seem to have no idea how to move the action forward in a high-school movie except to have a blow-out party at someone's house with no adult supervision.

As the first major Hollywood studio film to feature a gay teen protagonist, I guess some missteps and growing pains were to be expected.  Once again, the music choices in a high-school set film reflect somebody being about 10 or 20 years behind the times - the coming out dream sequence here is set to Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody", a song which was 32 years old at the time of release.  Something tells me that a gay teen in 2019 would be listening to more current music - but obviously these music choices are made by the adults making the film, not the teen characters appearing in it.  (Do kids at a modern Halloween party still listen to "Monster Mash"?  I doubt it.). I think maybe we're all a bit behind the times, and the music here reflects that - to get the real inside scoop on today's high-school scene, we'd have to watch films made by current high-schoolers.

Also starring Nick Robinson (last seen in "The 5th Wave"), Josh Duhamel (last seen in "Movie 43"), Jennifer Garner (last seen in "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past"), Katherine Langford (last seen in "Knives Out"), Jorge Lendeborg Jr. (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Keiynan Lonsdale (last seen in "The Finest Hours"), Miles Heizer (last seen in "The Stanford Prison Experiment"), Logan Miller (last seen in "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse"), Tony Hale (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Talitha Bateman (also last seen in "The 5th Wave"), Natasha Rothwell, Drew Starkey (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Clark Moore, Joey Pollari, Terayle Hill, Mackenzie Lintz, Bryson Pitts, Nye Reynolds, Skye Mowbray.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Ferris wheel tickets

Straight Outta Compton

Year 12, Day 155 - 6/3/20 - Movie #3,561

BEFORE: If there's a topic that I'm less likely to know about or weigh in on than civil rights, it's probably rap or hip-hop music.  See, I'm so ignorant I don't even know the difference (umm, is there one?) - I'm way off the reservation today, but it's a double-feature today that allowed me to weigh in on protesting and civil rights issues with "Selma", and this film keeps the chain alive, and very conveniently also re-connects with where I was originally headed anyway, right after "Knives Out".  So the film that was originally going to follow "Knives Out" will be here tomorrow, and I'll be back on track.  OK, I've got another secret reason for veering off my original path, and it's because I peeked into the future and figured out which film was going to be big #3,600, and I wasn't thrilled with that choice, so adding two more films at the last minute allowed me to change that.

But look at it this way, in April I watched "Just Mercy" and "Den of Thieves" back-to-back, using O'Shea Jackson Jr. as a link.  I briefly considered slipping this one in between those two, but then I wasn't crazy about which film would have landed on Mother's Day as a result.  So I'm making up for that admission now, by including it here.  It's still the year of the constant re-scheduling, after all.

Lakeith Stanfield carries over from "Selma" (that's four in a row for him, but this is the end of his run) and so does one other actor.

THE PLOT: The rap group NWA emerges from the mean streets of Compton in Los Angeles in the mid-1980's and revolutionizes hip-hop culture with their music and tales about life in the hood.

AFTER: I'm so white that the only reason I know the song "Straight Outta Compton" is because somebody once edited clips of NBC news anchor Brian Williams together to make it appear like he was rapping it, and that's probably still up on YouTube somewhere.  Through the magic of editing, he also performed "Rapper's Delight" and "Baby Got Back", I think these were made back in 2013 and aired on Jimmy Fallon's show (while he was hosting "Late Night", before "The Tonight Show" even) and next week, he may have to apologize for those, too, in addition to his blackface impression of Chris Rock on "SNL". Hell, I'm so white that before today, I probably couldn't have named any members of N.W.A. except for Ice Cube - which doesn't make me racist, it's just not music that I've tended to listen to over the years.  Anyway, I'm an East Coast guy, so I can probably name more members of the Wu-Tang Clan.  (There's, umm, RZA, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, and Ol' Dirty Bastard, how'm I doing?)

But my choice to watch this today turned out to be somewhat significant, because it also pertains to the relationship between police officers and people of color.  At the start of their career, the members of N.W.A. are seen harassed by cops for no reason, just for being black and dressing the way they do, and it's their white manager, Jerry Heller, who keeps them from being arrested.  Later Dr. Dre is pursued by cops and arrested, though he MIGHT have been driving just a bit over the speed limit.  More run-ins with the law include their performance of the song "F--- tha Police" in Detroit, after being explicitly ordered by a judge to NOT include that in their set.  Yep, it's free speech issues again tonight, that weird legal issue over what constitutes obscene or dangerous material, and it's funny how the legal system paid so much attention to the lyrics of certain performers, of color, and less time worrying about certain white artists were singing.  Say, Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson.

And in the news in the background is Rodney King footage, at least twice, at the time of his beating by L.A. police and during the subsequent trial of the four officers who beat him.  Kids, if you don't know who Rodney King was, just Google "1992 Los Angeles riots" for a history lesson.  Even though there was a videotape recording of police using excessive force during a routine traffic stop, and King ended up with a broken leg, bruises all over his body, cuts on his face and a burn from a stun gun, the four officers were acquitted, leading to six days of riots in L.A.  63 people were killed, thousands injured, and the National Guard, Army and Marine corps were called in to re-establish control.  Again, is this sounding familiar to anyone?  Rodney King was that decade's George Floyd, only he lived (umm, until 2012).  History could rhyme with itself once again, pending the outcome of the Minneapolis case.

But anyway, N.W.A. got its start when drug dealer Eazy-E got together with rapper Ice Cube and disc jockey Dr. Dre in 1986 to form Ruthless Records.  Connecting with manager Jerry Heller got them a record deal with Priority Records, and their 1988 album, also called "Straight Outta Compton", led to the infamous 1989 tour and the run-in with the Detroit police and the FBI.  Ice Cube went solo the next year when he refused to sign his contract without proper legal representation, which was probably a smart move in the long run.  Any time a white record guy is telling a black performer or songwriter, "Hey, this is just how business is done..." that should set off a red flag.  After watching so many documentaries about the music business in the 1960's, I can confirm that this pretty much was how the entire music business ran for decades (sometimes record companies stole money from white artists too, pretty much the whole industry was full of weasels) but still, that didn't make it right.

The other members of N.W.A. might have caught on sooner, if they hadn't been involved with their diss battles back-and-forth with Ice Cube.  Or if any of them had hired a real accountant to look at the books.  I've had some experience with distribution contracts and royalties in the film industry, and that's almost nearly as corrupt.  Try getting financial updates from the aggregator who got your movie on to Netflix, it's the same problem in a different medium.  In order to get your media out there, you usually have to go through certain "channels", and every party involved in those channels takes their cut, and then when it's finally time to pay you, oh, look, they just happen to have expenses that the contract says they can be reimbursed for, and those expenses just happen to total more than the royalties you're owed, so you get nada.

Dr. Dre was the next member of N.W.A. to leave the group and Heller's management, to form Death Row Records with Marion "Suge" Knight.  And as you probably heard, everything went fine after that, there were no more problems ever in that business relationship.  Just kidding.  Suge has his goons rough up Eazy-E in order to get him to release Dr. Dre from his contracts.  That's an innovative way to start your company, I guess.  Dre eventually splits from Suge Knight to form Aftermath Entertainment, and later Beats Electronics, which he sells to Apple.

Before too long, Eazy-E uncovers rampant corporate malfeasance when the accounting numbers JUST don't seem to add up, and there's talk of an N.W.A. reunion once everyone is available again, only it never happens for a completely different reason.  Still, if this is your kind of music then you can't deny the influence that N.W.A. had on the recording artists that followed, which the film is kind enough to show us during the credits.

In other news, I finally know where the popular saying "Bye, Felicia" comes from. OK, so I'm a bit behind the curve, that's how I choose to live my life.

Also starring O'Shea Jackson Jr. (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Jason Mitchell (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Corey Hawkins (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Aldis Hodge (last seen in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"), Neil Brown Jr. (last seen in "Battle Los Angeles"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "Private Life"), Marlon Yates Jr., Alexandra Shipp (last seen in "X-Men: Dark Phoenix"), Carra Patterson, Corey Reynolds (also last seen in "Selma"), Tate Ellington, Angela Elayne Gibbs, Bruce Beatty, Lisa Renee Pitts, R. Marcos Taylor (last seen in "Baby Driver"), Sheldon A. Smith, Elena Goode, Keith Powers, Inny Clemons (last seen in "Men in Black: International"), Mark Sherman, Camryn Howard, Cleavon McClendon, Rogelio Douglas Jr., Steve Turner, Tryon Woodley, LaDell Preston, Jordan Can, J. Kristopher, Stephanie Campbell, Marcc Rose, F. Gary Gray (last seen in "Law Abiding Citizen"), Michael Taylor, Brandon Lafourche, Dean Cameron (last seen in "Kicking and Screaming"), John Prosky, with archive footage of Ice Cube (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Dr. Dre (last seen in "Quincy"), Eazy-E, DJ Yella, Chris Tucker (last seen in "Silver Linings Playbook"), Snoop Dogg (also last seen in "Quincy"), Tupac Shakur (ditto), Eminem (last seen in "The Interview"), Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson (also last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Peter Jennings (last seen in "RBG"), Rodney King, Matt Lauer (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), and archive audio of Oliver North (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), Dan Rather (last seen in "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Bombshell"), Bob Schieffer (last seen in "Morning Glory").

RATING: 5 out of 10 smashed gold records

Selma

Year 12, Day 155 - 6/3/20 - Movie #3,560

BEFORE: Well, the next film on my list was going to be "Love, Simon", with Katherine Langford carrying over from "Knives Out" - thus finishing the Pride Month trilogy.  But I can't ignore the news of the past week any more, after staying up late a few nights ago and watching Minneapolis burn, then seeing those fires sparking protests in other cities, I've decided that I have to change course.  Yesterday (Tuesday?  It's still so hard to tell what day it is...) I went into Manhattan with my wife, partly to accompany her to a doctor's appointment and partly just to get out of the house, and I ended up eating breakfast outside in a park, in downtown Manhattan, half a block from where Al Sharpton and some other activists were holding a press conference to address the inequalities in America's justice system, highlighted again for the umpteenth time by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.  And last night, a protest marched right by our house in Queens, a curfew was enacted - on top of the still-in-place shelter-in-place orders, so I guess now we're on double super-secret lockdown - and it's here, it's all around me, it's all around the country, so it's time to address it.

This is part of the problem with laying out my film schedule a month or two in advance - I can't usually make a quick course correction like this.  Only I did it three times last year, when I had sudden linking emergencies.  This is a social emergency, shouldn't that be even more important than my silly method of linking films?  But here's where my ability to link films meets the call for social change - as I was going up and down a certain actor's filmography, coincidentally the SAME ACTOR who just carried over from "The Girl in the Spider's Web" to "Knives Out", I saw a couple of films that I realized could be very applicable to current events.  So I went from "I couldn't possibly make a change on the fly to address the news" to "Well, of course I can, and I should, because I suddenly see how I'm going to do it."

So Lakeith Stanfield carries over from "Knives Out" - these next two films were not part of my plan, in fact they've never been on any of my lists before, because I haven't felt any personal connection to them, or any urgency to watch them, not until now.  But the urgency is here, the need is here, so I'm going to roll with it.  I've thought before about how I always miss doing anything for Black History Month because I'm always so busy watching romances in February.  It may not be Black History Month right now, but that's a poor excuse on my part to hold back.

THE PLOT: A chronicle of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965.

AFTER: I hope you agree with me, that this sort of feels relevant right now - if not, well, you're entitled to your own opinion, because everyone's allowed to be wrong here and there.  It's a free country, which is sort of the point, or at least it's supposed to be.  But over two centuries after somebody penned that a fundamental belief of our country is that "all men are created equal", why are we still not THERE, at a place where that feels completely true and believable.  Or is the problem that everybody was "created" equal, and something in our American society keeps getting in the way from people living equally and being treated equally?  What's the point of acknowledging that we all start out at the same place, but then society makes sure that many of them don't get a fair shake?  Financial inequality, geographical inequality, gender inequality, and then cover that sundae with some hot racism, and a cherry on top.

Everything old is new again - we had Nazis marching in Charlottesville a few years back, and now we're back at the point where police are beating and killing black people again, it's like the 60's are back again. Yeah, the 1960's, but in some parts of the country, the 1860's never ended.  Taking down confederate flags and statues is helpful, but it's not addressing the core problem of fundamental racism.  This film was released in 2015, in time for the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the march from Selma to Montgomery was an important precursor to getting that legislation passed.  President Lyndon Johnson was sympathetic to the cause, or at least he appeared to be when he met with Martin Luther King, but since 1964 was an election year, he kept saying that it wouldn't be possible, not just yet, and he wanted to address any inequalities with an Anti-Poverty Act.  Because, umm, well, everybody knows that you can't focus on passing two bills at the same time, right?  That would be madness, and also probably sounded to LBJ like a lot of work.  Lame excuse!

Before I go any further, I have to point out that I'm a white guy, and the general consensus (at least according to the late night talk shows, which were all off last week, but came back last night full of apologies for making black jokes in the past, and white hosts letting their black colleagues have screen time via tele-conference to blacksplain racism to the audience) is that I don't have the right to comment here, because I haven't experienced racism first-hand.  Yeah, but I still recognize injustice, and what took place in the U.S. South in the 1960's was unjust.  In addition to lynchings, beatings, general intolerance and lack of service from whites-only restaurants, the entire voting system was rigged to keep African-Americans from taking advantage of their right to vote.  The white governments at city, county and state levels made it nearly impossible for blacks to register, not without paying a poll tax for all the previous elections they missed, having another registered voter (aka a white person) vouch for them, then having their name and address printed in the newspaper after registering, so the Klan would know where to build their next flaming cross.  After all that, they would have to take a quiz on local elected officials, answering as many non-multiple choice questions as necessary until they got one wrong, at which point, their application to register would be denied.

Is this sounding familiar to anybody out there?  Like, maybe the election of 2016, or the one that's about to take place?  As I've said here several times already this year, history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.  We've seen the GOP pull out every dirty trick in the last 4 or 5 years, from gerrymandering districts to being completely hypocritical over how fast to approve a new Supreme Court Justice - they couldn't POSSIBLY do that during Obama's last year in office, because that wouldn't be fair to let an outgoing President choose a new justice, yet they fast-balled TWO of Trump's selections, one who was probably incompetent and the other who was probably a sexual offender and a drunk. (In what universe is that better than a liberal?). And now the latest is the issue over mail-in ballots, because if we allow everyone to vote, somehow that would lead to voter fraud among Democrats, who would immediately use the names and addresses of dead people to vote five times each.  What they're really saying is, we can't win the next election fairly, so let's make everyone come out in person during a pandemic, which is already disproportionately affecting people of color, to cast their votes, and then maybe fewer minorities will find the will to vote, and those that do come out, we can find other ways of discounting their votes, either through rejecting their valid I.D.s or making each person with dark skin stand on their heads and recite the Gettysburg Address, word for word.

And so we look back to the past for advice - how did previous generations battle this systemic racism?  They protested, they marched, they got the ear of the President.  OK, well, two of those might still work today, so that's where we find ourselves, isn't it?  Look, this is the guy who said there were "good people on both sides" when one of the sides was alt-right NeoNazis!  Trust me, stick to the first two.  People this week were defying the curfews in some cities to hold protests, and that's almost exactly what happened back in 1965 in Selma, a march to the state Capitol building in Montgomery to demand voting rights for black Americans.

There was a court order to stop the march, but Dr. King went ahead with it anyway, and people got hurt.  Good people, regular people, church people, were beaten by state troopers.  Because a piece of paper said the march was illegal, yet there happens to be another piece of paper, the U.S. Constitution, that gives all citizens the right of free assembly, along with free speech.  And this was a non-violent protest, or at least it was until the state troopers got involved.  (There are some disturbing yet very important images here, including a prominent shot of Oprah, America's Queen of All Media, playing a character knocked to the ground in a close-up - just in case you were at all on the fence about which side you should be rooting for.)

So, they set up another march, and once the news of the first march's failure and images of people being beaten got around, right-minded people of all faiths and colors flocked to Selma for the second march, to stand with their oppressed brothers and sisters.  So the second time, a mixed crowd, black and white, crossed over the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River, and this time, the troopers, seeing the mixed nature of the crowd, parted ways to allow the march to proceed.  And, Dr. King then turned around and led his group away.  Having never studied this event before in detail, I was quite surprised here, but the later debate among the black leaders explained his dilemma - the troopers parting for the crowd could have been a trap, they could have allowed the crowd to pass, then cut off their escape route back over the bridge.  Or, maybe the Alabama politicians in charge of the troopers had seen the error of their ways, I guess we'll never know.

Anyway, the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Committee) and the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) fought back in federal court, and won the right to have a third, very legal march from Selma to Montgomery.  And that's how you should do things, in my opinion.  Non-violently if possible, get the courts on your side, and also get media attention, because that gets the word out and gets some sympathy for your cause.  Today's protestors would be wise to take some lessons from Dr. King, because if your call for justice also involves stealing sneakers from the Vans store, it's kind of hard to take you seriously.  And conservatives, don't think I've forgotten about you, because some of the same people who just a few weeks ago were protesting at State Capitol buildings because they were tired of being under lockdown and they wanted to get haircuts or go bowling are now saying that other people (of color) don't have any right to protest after someone got killed unnecessarily by a cop leaning on his windpipe.  What a bunch of hypocrites.

History, unfortunately, is ultimately unkind to nearly everyone, if you think about it.  Alabama Governor George Wallace ran for President unsuccessfully four times, and was shot and paralyzed a few years later in 1972.  MLK made it another five years before an assassin's bullet found him in 1968.  And LBJ made it through his second term, then retired to his Texas ranch, but only lived another four years, until 1973.  He had a good record on civil rights (eventually) and other issues, but then there was this little thing called Vietnam on his watch, too.  And so I keep thinking that Trump's going to get what's coming to him, too, eventually, but this year I realized that he may drag the whole country down into ruin first, which is kind of unfortunate.  When I heard last week that there were protestors trying to storm the White House and harm the President, I honestly thought, "Well, it took a bit longer than I thought it would, but we finally got there, didn't we?"

Trump's now under some fire for calling in the military to deal with these protests in various cities, and if that seems like an abuse of power, well, it wouldn't really be the first one for him, now, would it?  This same guy who would only send aid to a foreign country if they could dig up some dirt on his political opponent, the same guy who would only send PPE during a pandemic to the state governors who were willing to kiss his ass, the same guy who's likely to use every possible resource to rig the 2020 election in his favor and then even if he loses, you just know he's not going to step down willingly.  We could be looking at a military coup or a potential Civil War II in the same year that brought us the pandemic, economic collapse, racist cop killings, and don't forget about the murder hornets.  We've still got hurricane season to go, ebola might be staging a comeback, and then I think the zombie apocalypse before the election, though.  But by all means, go ahead and try to Make America Great Again, or Keep America Great or whatever.

I'm going to turn the rest of my time over to quotes from Martin Luther King, or at least quotes from him as heard in this movie, which I'm hoping are the same thing.

"We're here for a reason, through many, many storms."

"Our lives are not fully lived if we're not willing to die for those we love, for what we believe."

"It is unacceptable that they use our power to keep us voiceless."

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

"It's time to move beyond the protests to some real political power" (in other words, get out and vote, in person if you have to. Wear a mask if you have to. Mail in your ballot early if you can, and if you can't, don't let anyone tell you that you can't cast your ballot.  Even if they do, file your ballot AND a grievance.  File a lawsuit if you have to, but get out there and rock the vote.  This election in November needs to be won by the widest possible margin, so there can be zero dispute over the result, because I don't think the people in power are going to go willingly.)

Also starring David Oyelowo (last seen in "The Cloverfield Paradox"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "The Debt"), Carmen Ejogo (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald"), André Holland (last seen in "A Wrinkle in Time"), Tessa Thompson (last seen in "Men in Black: International"), Giovanni Ribisi (last seen in "The Gift"), Lorraine Toussaint (last seen in "Girls Trip"), Stephan James (last seen in "If Beale Street Could Talk"), Colman Domingo (ditto), Wendell Pierce (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Common (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Cuba Gooding Jr. (last seen in "Don Jon"), Dylan Baker (last seen in "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile"), Tim Roth (last seen in "The Con is On"), Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Ruben Santiago-Hudson (last seen in "Shaft"), Niecy Nash (last seen in "Code Name: The Cleaner"), Omar Dorsey (last seen in "The Blind Side"), David Dwyer (ditto), Ledisi Young, Trai Byers, Kent Faulcon, John Lavelle, Henry G. Sanders (last seen in "Roman J. Israel, Esq."), Jeremy Strong (last seen in "Molly's Game"), Nigel Thatch, Tara Ochs, Martin Sheen (last seen in "Love Happens"), Michael Shikany (last seen in "A Merry Friggin' Christmas"), Michael Papajohn (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Stephen Root (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Stan Houston, E. Roger Mitchell (last seen in "The Spectacular Now"), Corey Reynolds (last seen in "The Meddler"), David Marshall Silverman (last seen in "The Leisure Seeker"), Wayne Hughes, Jim France, with archive footage of Harry Belafonte (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Tony Bennett (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Sammy Davis Jr.

RATING: 6 out of 10 FBI wiretaps

Knives Out

Year 12, Day 154 - 6/2/20 - Movie #3,559

BEFORE: Well, in the original plan I had worked out, the next film was going to be "Hall Pass", because it connected to another film that I want to see, another one I've been trying to clear off the books for months and is quite un-linkable, much like "Phantom Thread", and the easiest way to get there was through "Hall Pass", I could get there from here in just two steps.  But even though I've already got a bunch of Owen Wilson films coming up, so really, what's one more - I wasn't really happy with putting "Hall Pass" here, because it seems like a sort of romance film, albeit a comic one. Maybe that one really belongs in February with the other romances, I thought.

So I did some messing around with the linking to see if I could find a substitute - I couldn't replace it with one film, but I could replace it with two, and at that point my road to Father's Day was still just a bit short, so rather than plan for a day or two off, I took out "Hall Pass", and I'm dialing in two replacement films, and tomorrow's film also ties in with Pride Month, so it seemed like an excellent substitution - I'd heard great things about "Knives Out", so if I was eager to get to it, even better, that confirmed that I'd be willing to make the swap.

The only problem there was, "Knives Out" wasn't available to me yet, not on cable, not on streaming - but I figured there was a good chance it would air on cable before its slot came up - nope.  I did have access to an Academy screener, but I still can't get back to that studio because it's still closed due to the pandemic.  But then "Knives Out" became available on iTunes and cable On Demand - only at the prices of $5.99 and $6.99, respectively.  Oh well, that's more than I like to pay for an On Demand movie, but I didn't see a way to get it at a lower price.  I figured that's still cheaper than going to see a movie on the big screen, and since I'm saving money right now with all the theaters closed, I could pay that much to see it, and even eat free popcorn at home, and still sort of justify it.

Thankfully, the price on iTunes JUST came down as of this week, I think, from $5.99 to $2.99.  That's MUCH better, now it's a no-brainer.  Still not as cheap for me as if it were running on HBO or Showtime, it's still an additional cost but I'll take it. Lakeith Stanfield carries over from "The Girl in the Spider's Web", and in two days time I'll still end up where I would have been if I'd watched "Hall Pass", so my larger plan remains relatively uninterrupted.  (UPDATE - this one's coming to AmazonPrime on June 12, so it turns out I was just 10 days too early.  The price drop on iTunes was probably a sign it was coming to one of the platforms, I just wasn't sure which one.)

THE PLOT: A detective investigates the death of a patriarch of an eccentric, combative family.

AFTER: It's kind of funny that Daniel Craig was absent from "The Girl in the Spider's Web", when he was prominent in the first "Dragon Tattoo" Hollywood film, but he turned up here on the following day.  I think he made the right choice.

That's the best positive I have, the cast - lots of great players, people who have been mainstays of previous Movie Years, like Michael Shannon and Toni Collette - I'm always interested to see how often those cats will appear in any given year.  Chris Evans, of course, has been a big player in all the Marvel tentpole films, which I've tended to build my years around so I won't miss them, and while I can't say I program many films with Don Johnson and Jamie Lee Curtis in them, it's great to know these 80's icons are still working.

And I usually LOVE films that take on this genre, spoofing the classic "murder mystery" plots, with all that entails - the enigmatic foreign-sounding detective/criminologist, sorting out a near-impossible murder in a Victorian(-ish) setting, plenty of colorful characters in colorful clothing, each with a unique motive or axe to grind against the deceased, with everyone chewing the scenery as they hold grudges against each other, as the big plot/conspiracy is slowly revealed.  It's "Clue", it's "Murder on the Orient Express", it's a convoluted Sherlock Holmes story, all mashed-up together.  I don't care if they play all that straight or just do it like a big spoof, like "Murder by Death" did - chances are, it's going to be good and twisty.

But I think the big cast and the stable of stereotypical that makes up this large, thrown-together family is also a drawback here.  While nearly every family member gets a few minutes to emote and shine, for some of them, that's all they get.  Giving, say, Michael Shannon just a few scenes to be his usually tough, menacing self is kind of limiting, like putting a tiger in a cage or putting weights on an Olympic runner.  This is probably why you hired him in the first place, for God's sakes, let the man do his thing!  Similarly, Toni Collette gets a few minutes to herself (and if she's not doing a perfect Gwyneth Paltrow impression here, I'll eat my hat) but it's just not enough.  I've been given a taste of some great character work here, but I want more - there better be a "Knives Out 2" already in production, because the crazy story of this crazy family needs to be continued.

Naturally, though, I'm trying to avoid any details of the murder in question, or the gradual reveal that takes place over the course of the film.  It's very flashbacky, but then it kind of has to be.  Like many films these days, there's a splash-page opening with what has determined to be the most interesting moment, the few minutes leading to the discovery of the body, and then everything else gets filled in later as the plot moves simultaneously forward through the investigation and backwards through the flashbacks.  Normally I would hate this, but it's fine for a murder investigation I suppose - if I'm being honest, I don't think there was another structure that could have worked here.

Inherently one would also expect a number of red herrings, and that's the structure at work again, when there are at least 11 subjects (I would estimate 5 legit ones, the others would be real long shots, but still, possible with enough added motive) and any story in the murder mystery genre would then begin the process of whittling those 11 down to 1 or 2.  I'm not going to fault the ultimate solution here, but still in some ways the process of getting there is so overly convoluted that I'm right on the edge of questioning the whole thing.  It's not the feeling of "Oh, the pieces were right there the whole time, we just didn't put them together..." but instead it's more like, "Oh, here are the last few pieces that we're choosing to find at the last minute."  Which is a choice, but I'm not sure that it's the best one.

The concept of a character who can't lie without vomiting seems just a bit too convenient - I don't believe this is a genuine medical condition in the real world, so it feels very much like a short-cut for a screenwriter looking for a way to avoid using a lie-detector test, which is admittedly a device that comes with its own set of narrative problems, but the vomit thing seems like a cheat.  There are other cheats in play here, like how easily people find things that were supposed to be hidden - so I guess they weren't really hidden very well, then?  I think this film could have been a "7", maybe should have been a "7", but I think the closer I take a look at the mechanics behind it all, the more little things I'm going to find that will bug me.  I think it's worthy of a re-watch, because I want to catch everything I missed on the first time around, but I'm not sure this will become a long-term favorite for me after that.  The sequel, on the other hand, I'm totally down for, now that I know what sort of thing to look for.

Also starring Daniel Craig (last seen in "Defiance"), Chris Evans (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Ana de Armas (last seen in "Hands of Stone"), Jamie Lee Curtis (last seen in "The Tailor of Panama"), Michael Shannon (last seen in "Elvis vs. Nixon"), Don Johnson (last seen in "Book Club"), Toni Collette (last seen in "Krampus"), Christopher Plummer (last seen in "Lucky Break"), Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martell (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Riki Lindhome (last heard in "The Lego Batman Movie"), Edi Patterson, Frank Oz (last heard in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), K Callan (last seen in "Frankie and Johnny"), Noah Segan (last seen in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), M. Emmet Walsh (last seen in "Reds"), Marlene Forte, and the voice of Joseph Gordon-Levitt (also last heard in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi").

RATING: 6 out of 10 South American countries

The Girl in the Spider's Web

Year 12, Day 153 - 6/1/20 - Movie #3,558

BEFORE: We got out to Coney Island yesterday, just for an hour or so, we're not really "beach people" but it was nice to be outside, on a boardwalk, and eating take-out food on a bench, instead of the same old dining room table.  There were no rides or shows, of course, but at least the big crowd was out last weekend for Memorial Day, and there were fewer people out yesterday.  I swung by the new brewpub out there, which is also take-out only, and picked up some summer selections for the beer fridge, all I really had were dark beers and winter seasonals.

Vicky Krieps carries over from "Phantom Thread", it's pretty obvious that this was originally planned as part of a trilogy of films with Stephen Merchant, only then I saw a way to sneak "Phantom Thread" into the mix, and I was desperate to clear that one off the DVR.  Thank God there were a couple non-Swedish actors in here, or I would never have been able to link to it.

Speaking of that, this one and the preceding Hollywood version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" don't link AT ALL to the Swedish version of "Dragon Tattoo" and its two proper sequels, all of which came out in 2009.  They're all available on Amazon Prime, so I've got "The Girl Who Played With Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest" on my watchlist now, I suppose I should add the original Swedish "Dragon Tattoo" film too, because it's been so long I can't even remember what happened in it.

I suppose the upside is that if I add the original Swedish "Dragon Tattoo" to my list, I can not only watch all three, but there's ONE Swedish actor in there who was in a couple Bergman films back in the day, so that could give me a proper outro if I decide to work through Bergman's filmography next January, we'll have to see about that.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (Movie #1,441)

THE PLOT: Young computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist find themselves caught in a web of spies, cybercriminals and corrupt government officials.

AFTER: Seriously, what is up with this franchise?  Why were there two versions of "Dragon Tattoo" made, one with Noomi Rapace and one with Rooney Mara, only then the Swedes made movies out of all three original novels, and Hollywood just couldn't be bothered to adapt more than one?  Why didn't Sony follow up with American-made versions of the other books?  Then they waited almost a decade, and skipped ahead and made a movie out of book #4, which wasn't even written by the same author?  I mean, yeah, I get that the original author died, but aren't his books considered the standard for the character?  They worked through all the Ian Fleming Bond novels AND short stories before they turned to ones by other authors.

The Hollywood version of "Dragon Tattoo" made over $232 million, with a budget of $90 million, so that's a hit, right?  Why somebody didn't sign the director or the principal cast for sequels and go right into production on them is a curious question.  OK, sure, the Swedish versions went there first, and there might be some ongoing confusion in the marketplace, but there are domestic and foreign versions of the same films available all the freakin' time, so what's the excuse?  Instead, by waiting too long to get going, and then jumping ahead to film the fourth (?) book in the series, they spent $43 million just to take in $35 million worldwide, and that's not counting the costs of release and promotion.  So that's how you kill a franchise, I guess.  As a result, the public gets two films with different directors, and different actors playing the same roles in both films.

Finally, I found an answer on a Wiki page about the entire franchise - David Fincher, director of the Hollywood "Dragon Tattoo" was signed to a two-picture deal to direct the proper sequels, but while the screenplays were being revised, it was determined that it was too difficult to get Fincher, Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara all back together again at the same time.  Apparently most people don't realize that 50% of making movies is just the logistics of arranging the schedules of famous actors.  Now I'm wondering if this was just an excuse to move the franchise in a different direction, maybe the rights were cheaper for the non-Stieg Larsson books, or there was too much fear that the audience would be confused by films released with the same titles as others already out in the marketplace.  Or perhaps because it would have highlighted how freakin' long it took Sony to produce a sequel to "Dragon Tattoo".

It probably didn't help that the author of the first three books died, and he never married his long-time girlfriend for her own protection (umm, yeah, sure, good excuse there, dude) so his father and brother therefore inherited the rights to his literary works.  There's an unfinished novel on a laptop somewhere, and the girlfriend owns the computer, but not the contents, or something like that, and it's all a big legal mess.  That's why it was probably easier for the film studio to deal with Larsson's family, who are the ones that hired the new writer to make more books in the series, instead of trying to figure out how Larsson originally intended to continue Lisbeth's story.

I went back and read my review from 2013 of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" - it's very short, so I must have been in a terse mood, or maybe back then I was so radically anti-spoiler that I ended up not saying anything about the plot, just to be on the safe side.  But today, clearly nobody out there has any interest in seeing this sequel, so I think I'm mostly in the clear.  The film opens with a flashback to Lisbeth's childhood, raised by her father (apparently some kind of spy/crime lord, I bet they dropped that info in the 2nd book, which didn't get adapted) who routinely molested her sister (oh, yeah, she had a sister) and would have molested her too, if she hadn't jumped from a high window in the house, which was inconveniently and impossibly located on the edge of a cliff (seriously, WHO builds a house there?) but somehow Lisbeth survived the fall - one advantage of growing up in Sweden, I guess, there's always enough snow to save you?

I'll admit I was pretty confused by this flashback opening - they went to all the trouble of showing us that the two sisters had different-colored hair, one was brunette and one was blonde.  Then in the shot right after one sister (Lisbeth) jumps out the window and off the cliff, in the reverse image of Camilla, her hair isn't very blonde, it looked brownish - symbolism, perhaps, but it caused me to think that it was Camilla who jumped from the window, and not Lisbeth.  My mistake, of course, but I maintain they should have color-corrected the shot of Camilla on the ledge to really make sure her hair was blonde.

In a scene not too much later, Lisbeth is talking to her girlfriend and mentions that her father and sister are both dead, and she's fine with that.  More buried memories that are slowly being revealed, of course, but just like in comic books, if we don't see a body and verify their deaths, how dead are they?  I also got somewhat confused by the reporter checking out the image from the security camera of the man who attacked Lisbeth in her apartment - he figures out the man is one of her father's old henchmen, but I thought that image more closely resembled her own father.

Unfortunately, this is a film that packs so much action into its storyline, and keeps things moving at a breakneck pace, to the point where I found myself wondering exactly what was going on.  And I was trying to concentrate, I really was, so I just think they should have dumbed it down a little bit, connected a few more dots for those of us who aren't up on computer hacking and international espionage.  I get that there's some kind of computer program that this guy wrote, and he needs a hacker's help to get it back from the people he sold it to, though that turns out to be the NSA (!!) and it allows somebody to take control of any or all nuclear systems.  Oh, sure, that's not a big deal at all or anything. Maybe a better idea was to not write this program in the first place, or not sell it to the NSA?  Just saying.

Anyway, it's a huge file, over 2,200 bytes of code.  Really?  That's, like a whopping 2 Kb?  Jesus, I've got photos that take up more space on my computer than that.  Shouldn't it be 2 Mb, or 2 Gb, or 2 terrabytes, even?  This has got to be a NITPICK POINT, that somebody could control the world's nuclear arsenal with just 2 Kb of code.  No freakin' way.  Anyway, after Lisbeth gets this tiny 2 Kb file away from the NSA, and somehow also erases it from their servers, which takes all of 5 seconds (plus an hour of re-routing her signal through every country on the map) suddenly everybody's after her because she has the MacGuffin file.  There's the guy from the NSA, the Swedish government that wants to keep it out of the hands of the other governments, and the "Spiders" organization, led by that mysterious figure from her own past.

She doesn't show up for the delivery because somebody blows up her apartment, with her in it, so he goes into hiding (NITPICK POINT: couldn't she have just called to re-schedule?) and she needs the help of her journalist friend from the first movie to figure out who's after her, and where the safe house is.  More constantly-shifting alliances, as she has to rescue both the programmer's son and the NSA guy from different situations, essentially putting a team together that she hopes can both unlock the software and take down the organization trying to kill her.

At least, I think that's what happened - again, the movie's very lean on dumbing down the details and handing them out to the uninformed.  It all comes to head back at the beginning, at that childhood home balanced on the edge of the cliff, and history repeats itself, only in reverse.  I think there's definitely some artistry here, unfortunately it's so buried under layers of studio politics and terrible creative decisions that exist outside of the story itself.

Also starring Claire Foy (last seen in "First Man"), Sverrir Gudnason, Lakeith Stanfield (last seen in 'Uncut Gems"), Silvia Hoeks (last seen in "Blade Runner 2049"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "Fighting with My Family"), Claes Bang, Christopher Convery, Synnove Macody Lund, Cameron Britton, Andreja Pejic, Mikael Persbrandt (last seen in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"), Volker Bruch (last seen in "The Reader"), Beau Gadsdon (last seen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), Carlotta von Falkenhayn.

RATING: 5 out of 10 password fails

Phantom Thread

Year 12, Day 152 - 5/31/20 - Movie #3,557

BEFORE: Julia Davis carries over from "Fighting with My Family", and I know I'm creating a bit of thematic whiplash here, going from the world of wrestling to the world of 1950's high fashion.  And tomorrow I'll be back on action films, it can't be helped.  Today's film doesn't link to very much, now that Daniel Day-Lewis has retired for what, the third time?  I don't know who's retired more times, him, or Joaquin Phoenix, or Hayao Miyasaki.  (Streisand's probably got them all beat.).

But while I can't say whether this film has been on my watchlist the longest, I know that it's the one that's been on my DVR the longest, since December 2018.  Yep, that's how hard it is to link to.  So if there's a way to cross it off the list before May's over, I've got to take it.  I can still get where I need to be on July 4 by going through this film.

Before I get to the film, let me get to the format stats for May.  This has been the biggest month ever for me on the streaming platforms, I think this must be the first time that I've watched more films on Netflix, AmazonPrime, Disney Plus and Hulu (combined, of course) than I've watched from cable. This could be significant, but also it's taken me this long to change with the times.  I can't tell yet if this will happen again going forward, but watching 2/3 of May's films online on various platforms seems sort of significant.  Bear in mind, the studios I work for were shut down, so I didn't have access to screeners, and I've had to scramble a bit.

MAY 2020 -
4 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The Constant Gardener, Call Me by Your Name, Fighting with My Family, Phantom Thread
5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, The Dresser, The Chumscrubber, Chuck & Buck, Good Boys
12 watched on Netflix: Angel Has Fallen, The Duchess, Other People, Wine Country, The Willoughbys, The Angry Birds Movie 2, Tarzan 2: The Legend Begins, The Secret Life of Pets 2, Obvious Child, The Last Laugh, A Serious Man, The King
1 watched on Academy screeners: 45 Years
3 watched on iTunes: Code Name: The Cleaner, We Don't Belong Here, Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay
2 watched on Amazon Prime: The Aeronauts, Beautiful Boy
1 watched on Hulu: Booksmart
3 watched on Disney+: Frozen II, Aladdin, Tarzan & Jane
1 watched on a random site: Breakfast of Champions
32 TOTAL

THE PLOT: In 1950's London, Reynolds Woodcock is a renowned dressmaker whose fastidious life is disrupted by a young, strong-willed woman, Alma, who becomes his muse and lover.

AFTER: I haven't quite decided yet if this is truly the Year of the Re-schedule (or in some cases, the Re-re-re-re-schedule), or the Year of the Weird Movies.  Maybe it's both, but by "weird", in this case, I don't mean films about aliens or zombies or mutant superheroes (even though all may show up before 2020 is done), I mean films that just leave me scratching my head, wondering, "What the heck was somebody thinking when they made this?"  This has sort of ranged from the outlandishly bizarre ("Mortal Engines", "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), to the quietly personal but ultimately pointless ("Dreamland", "The Tree of Life").  If a movie is just plain stupid and silly ("Murder Mystery", "Cold Pursuit") I can almost forgive that, because if nothing else, it could be good for a few laughs.  But then what am I supposed to make of a movie that comes off as really intelligent, but in the end, just goes absolutely nowhere?  (Like, umm, OK, "The Aeronauts" is a good example.)

That's really where I thought this one was going for the first hour, at least.  I've heard good things about this film, plus it got 6 Oscar nominations - but, on the other hand, only one win, for Best Costume Design.  Yeah, so that's a mixed bag, and it's no help.  It's about a fashion designer in the 1950's, and he's been successful, but also he's very eccentric, and he's been allowed to lead a sheltered life, with things exactly the way he likes them.  He's not gay, only there are signs that he might be, from his diva-like personality to being hung up on his dead mother, to, well, honestly, the whole dressmaking thing.  I hate to fall back on stereotypyes, but they do tend to make things easier.  When words like "fussy" and "confirmed bachelor" are applied to a character, that's naturally where my mind goes, only there's no hard evidence to support this theory.  Then again, it's the 1950's and people were better at hiding their homosexuality back then, because they had to be, so it's still possible.  He could be lying to the people around him, or even to himself.

But let's work with what he have for now, dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock gets enamored with Alma, a waitress in a café, I guess because she remembers his entire order without writing it down, and those English people love their big, complicated breakfasts.  Welsh rarebit with a poached egg and sausages, plus jam, cream, and butter.  (Man, I miss breakfast.  I'd love to just get back to a real NYC diner soon for a Western omelette, hash browns and toast with an extra side of sausage.  I like to butterfly the sausage and put it on the buttered toast with some grape jelly...and keep the coffee coming.).  Anyway, he asks her out to dinner after she serves him breakfast - for a second I thought his dinner invitation would involve her just serving him again in the same café, which sounds just like what this guy would want.

By the end of their first date, her clothes are off - but it's not what you might think, he's immediately designing a dress for her.  (Again, not gay, but come ON!)  She's apparently got the perfect figure for his dresses, meaning small breasts and a bit of a belly. (Hmmm....).  Reynolds is clear that he's not the marrying kind (really?) but he is in the market for a live-in muse.  Alma agrees to this situation and becomes sort of a live-in employee, muse and part-time lover - some reading between the lines is required here, because this is an arty movie, elegant and not blatant.

From there, this turns into a movie about two people (three, if you count Reynolds' sister, Cyril) who have to learn to live together, with all that entails.  And living with someone full-time tends to be a constantly changing set of negotiations, everything from sleeping schedules and arrangements to sharing meals are propositions that are constantly up for revisions.  As I think a lot of people found out during the Covid-19 lockdown, where everyone's regular work and school schedules got turned upside-down, and suddenly people had to spend much more time with their spouses and kids than they'd gotten accustomed to.  I'm sure many relationships have been affected, some may even have been dissolved after realizing that people don't really LIKE the people they're in love with.  More research may be required, though.

Here this phenomenon manifests itself in little things, like how much noise Alma makes when she eats breakfast, scratching the butter on to her toast, or clanking her knife against the plate.  This is all very distracting to Reynolds, if his concentration is shattered during breakfast, he's no good for the rest of the day.  There are simple solutions, of course, like Alma could learn to eat quieter, or they could eat breakfast at different times, or maybe Reynolds could learn to not be such a fussy diva.  Just saying.

After a certain period of time, Alma realizes that he's just not that into her.  (Again, not gay, he just apparently wants to keep her at arm's length.  Right.)  When she's grown tired of waiting, instead of doing the adult thing and moving out, which would probably make more sense, she enacts a plan to make Reynolds dependent on her.  It shouldn't work, but it does (no spoilers here) and eventually they get married.  Finally, the film got a little bit exciting here, which was a relief, because by this point I'd convinced myself that I had missed something.  There's one final scene that really drives the point home, where he wordlessly tells her that he knows what she did, and then she (with words, unfortunately) tells him that she knows that he knows.  Hey, not everyone can act like Daniel Day-Lewis, and speak volumes without saying anything.  Finally, it's back to him, and he knows that she knows that he knows, and he doesn't care.  That's more than a little messed up.

I still don't know what "Phantom Thread" means, so I'll have to look that up.  It just reminds me of Penn & Teller's "Invisible Thread" routine, which I'm pretty sure has no bearing here.  This is another film on that list of "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die", where my score is now 428 seen.  I'm going to go on record as saying that May has been one hell of a shout-out to National Mental Health month, I've certainly seen my share of character with issues, addictions and hang-ups over the last 31 days.  But then again, I could probably say that about any given month.

Also starring Daniel Day-Lewis (last seen in "Gandhi"), Vicky Krieps (last seen in "Hanna"), Lesley Manville (last seen in "Mr. Turner"), Camilla Rutherford (last seen in "The Fifth Estate"), Gina McKee (last seen in "Atonement"), George Glasgow, Brian Gleeson (last seen in "Logan Lucky"), Harriet Sansom Harris, Lujza Richter, Nicholas Mander, Philip Franks, Phyllis MacMahon (last seen in "Shaun of the Dead"), Silas Carson (last seen in "Dying of the Light"), Eric Sigmundsson, Richard Graham (last seen in "The World's End"), Martin Dew (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Ian Harrod, Jane Perry, Emma Clandon, Sarah Lamesch (last seen in "Mary Shelley"), Sue Clark, Joan Brown, Harriet Leitch, Dinah Nicholson, Julie Duck, Maryanne Frost, Elli Banks, Amy Cunningham, Amber Brabant, Geneva Corlett.

RATING: 5 out of 10 New Year's Eve party guests